Drawings

Victory Victuals

The USS Olympia is the oldest historic Naval vessel afloat (in the world) on the Delaware River in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Sculptors in collaboration with The independent Seaport Museum hosted Artship Olympia, intersecting art and history in a four month exhibition aboard the USS Olympia from June to October, 2016.

My interest in Artship Olympia was to highlight the historically overlooked, yet vital aspect of the lives of the sailors— their diet, as well as the distinction between rank and class reflected in the naval rations. While officers dined on freshly frozen meet, the common sailor subsisted on a diet high in starch— mostly of hardtack, potatoes and salted tinned meat. Cooked side by side in the same galley kitchen but worlds apart in terms of variety, flavor and presentation. The privileged class enjoyed personal space, privacy and fine dining while the common sailors prepared their food on the floor, slept side by side divided only by canvas and ate off of enameled metal plates.

Historic Naval advertisements promised “good food” in acknowledgment that eating well is an important aspect of a person’s quality of life/work and well being— and perhaps aiming to dispel the historic reputation of poor diets on board naval vessels. Yet, in “The Bounding Billow”, a historic account of life aboard the Olympia, there is not much stated regarding the food that was consumed on board, aside from the mention of Thanksgiving meals and the occasional utterance of the disdained daily staples: “hardtack and salt horse.” Because of our food centric culture and because of my personal interest in food, I created "Victory Victuals" to illuminate this history of disparate diets aboard the Olympia through two sculptures side by side.

Fuller Chicken

Food Related

Robinsonaden

I created this body of work through an artist residency called RAIR in Northeast Philadelphia, located at a construction demolition waste recycling facility (called Revolution Recovery). Inspired by the idea of being stranded on an island, dependent on one's ingenuity and resourcefulness for survival, I constructed a 17' flat bottom boat that I rowed down the Delaware River.

The Servant Question

Artist in Residence Winterthur Museum and Gardens, 2013

My residency at Winterthur led me beyond the objects in the collection and drew me into the stories behind the objects and architecture. I became captivated by Henry Francis DuPont’s passions to collect objects and how his fervor and means led him to expand Winterthur into the 175–room museum that we know today. I became fascinated with how the place operated before it became a museum, and what had been erased and removed in the transition from home to a public museum.

My intrigue led me to learning that it took (on average) a staff of 40 servants to maintain the 175- room home (where lived the family of four), and how that history was folded under and into the magic that we are swept through today. I was transfixed by the invisible history of this impressive museum, and wanted to bring it into the light.

Taking inspiration from DuPont’s vision and ability to amend architectural spaces and elements to fit into his home and needs, I set out to do something similar. I created an attic space of a 1790 house’s, presented in the basement of the Chris White Gallery Space. Some of the elements are authentic, borrowed from the attic I replicated. It is a space that viewers can enter and experience, much like the period rooms at Winterthur. My intention to bring these two liminal spaces together was to acknowledge the forgotten, often utilitarian spaces of the home, as well as acknowledge the histories where domestic servants would have resided and worked- the attic and the basement.

I also created several furniture objects in response to pieces in the collection. Intrigued by furniture that has dual functions and or idiosyncratic constructions, I created my own versions of “Day Bed,” “Tilt-top Commode Table,” “Peep-Show,” and “DuPont Circle Quilt.” I hope that these works offers a new way to enter into thinking about the collections at Winterthur, honoring the mesmerizing quality of the place, while questioning the many layers that it embodies.

Collage

Birthing Chairs

I find the subjects of human birth and the tools used to assist in birthing a provocative subject for investigation. It is interesting how such an undeniably important event is a marginalized subject of history. I am particularly interested in the birthing chair and it’s place in historical practices of parturition.

I am working on creating a physical time line of the history of birthing chairs, to bring into existence a physical replication of the material history of the birthing chair, marking the physical changes that reflect the evolution of thought and cultural ideologies surrounding birth.

My interest to create this body of work is to uncover the forgotten material culture of women, to question cultural myths surrounding birth and to give historic context to our contemporary understanding of the birthing process.

Dovecotes

I constructed three wooden dovecotes for the Southern Chester County Sculpture Trail in 2013. The designs were inspired by traditional regional architecture. Celebrating the beauty of the agrarian history of Chester County while recreating a lost historic practice.

A dovecote is a large birdhouse used in the cultivation of Doves and Pigeons, dating back to as early as AD 256 Egypt. Doves were among the earliest domesticated animals by man, along with bees. Dovecote provided “a source of meat, eggs, down, fertilizer, and even gun-powder.” They were constructed in this country, predominately in Virginia by British settlers in the seventeenth century, not only as a food source, but also “as an architectural marvel, an eye-catcher, a thing of beauty.” Relatively large, they could house up to one thousand nesting boxes, or as few as ten.

In Crysler's Memory

On my initial visit to the UD Botanical Gardens I was struck by its location. Positioned parallel to South College Ave, there is no escape from the sound of endless traffic. The noise drew me to the perimeter of the garden, where I looked across the street to discover the vacant lot where the Chrysler Plant had been, but is no longer. In fact, there is absolutely no visual trace or marking of its once existence.

I felt compelled to address this absence of industry and significant location where so many people invested much of their lives. The place where we go to work every day, year after year, becomes part of us. The people we work with become our community, built on the common ground of income earning, production and shared life experiences. I wanted to offer a place to sit and acknowledge this absence, this loss.

I have placed several Chrysler car trunks in the garden, directed toward the vacant parking lot that once housed the 3.4 million square foot automobile plant. The trunks act as benches and welcome garden visitors to sit on them and take a moment to consider the loss of over 2000 peoples livelihood and communal identity, as well as the loss of industry in the Newark, DE community.

VT Landscape Paintings

Many thanks to the Clowes Foundation for a grant to visit the VT Studio Center in July, 2016. The weather was beautiful, and hard to remain inside the spacious studio I was assigned. I spent several mornings and afternoons outside- painting the surrounding charming architecture. These are some of my favorites.